Book review of K.Tuori, K. Tuori, The Eurozone Crisis – A Constitutional Analysis

The book by Tuori and Tuori on the Eurozone crisis is a clear and exhaustive account of the legal and economic developments following the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis. The particular originality of this scholarly effort is due, first of all, to the authors' several insights into the historical and conceptual evolution of the so-called 'economic constitution'. For example, they discern a microeconomic layer (laid down in the Treaty of Rome) and a macroeconomic layer (established by the Treaty of Maastricht), interrelated with each other but also at times contradicting each other. In other words, the macroeconomic layer, characterized by the aggregate level of economy, presupposed full implementation of the microeconomic layer, which focuses on the behavior of individual consumers. According to Tuori and Tuori, the crisis has shaken the premises of the macroeconomic layer, and therefore substantially altered some of the constitutional innovations of the Treaty of Maastricht. In this sense, to give some examples, the principle of price stability has been replaced with the broader principle of financial stability; the principles of Member States' fiscal sovereignty and corresponding liability in fiscal policy (expressed by the no-bailout clause) have been modified. The theoretical premises of the book rely on the so-called 'Many Constitutions' approach, i.e. the idea that the European constitution is plural and should be conceived not merely as a stand-alone document, but as the relationship between constitutional law and its object of regulation (i.e. the constitutional object).  It would be thus possible to distinguish the economic, juridical, political, security and social constitution. These constitutions would have emerged gradually in different stages of integration of the European Union... (segue)